In Attack of In Defense of Food

We finally got around to reading Micheal Pollan's dietary blueprint, In Defense of Food. Its simple guideline of "Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants." rolls off the tongues of bloggers and message board responders as easy as '1st!' does from the keyboard of blog commenters. However, a cognitive dissonance and poor logic arguments exist in the later sections of the book.

The first section is a complete and nuanced takedown of the failure of nutritional science to prevent lethal diseases such as heart failure, diabetes, and cancer. From the low-fat craze of the 80's to the low-carb cult of the 00's, Poe-Lan points out that all nutritional recommendations based on separating 'good' nutrients from 'bad' ones will invariably leave humans deficient in one nutrient or combination thereof that nutritionism has so far not yet identified (No, the missing nutrient is not Love). Thankfully skipping over the overrated High-Angst diet of the 90s, Poe-Lan postulates that any reductionist nutritional approach is doomed to failure since none will ever be able to capture the complexity of an omnivore's needs. The conclusions of nutritional science become quickly appropriated in order to legitimize the same industrial, processed food that is killing us and thus must be disregarded.

In the second section, Poe-Lan advocates returning to the food culture and traditions of our great-grandparents and uses recent findings in nutritional science to support his directive. Haugh? We thought nutritionism and reductionist science was meritless! No, the great Poe-Lan argues that the shortcomings of the industrial, Western Diet can be attributed to a lack of natural, plant-based antioxidants, too much omega-6 oils, and too little omega-3 oils. Bending the trendy nutritional zeitgiest to his ends muddles the Word of Poe-Lan, and comes way too close to "Dr. Oz shilling for resveratrol on Oprah" territory for our tastes. His continuous linking of diet to cancer is similarly troubling. For spending almost the complete second third of the book reneging on the first third, Poe-Lan offers this limp apology:

You've no doubt noticed that much of the nutrition science I've presented here qualifies as reductionist science, focusing as it does on individual nutrients (such as certain fats or carbohydrates or antioxidants) rather than on whole foods or dietary patterns. Guilty.

Eesh. What follows in the third section is lots of fine print and qualifications on his initial 7-word thesis statement. We're sure following it would lead to a healthy diet, but the time and effort involved in living it would surely suck up all the free time you formally enjoyed doing things you liked. Good luck watching that pretentious foreign film you got from Netflix when you are too busy hunting boar and chantrelles. Say goodbye to sleeping in on the weekends because you need to get to the farmer's market before it closes. Those afternoons you spent socializing, playing basketball, or frivolously blogging will now be devoted to washing and cooking CSA turnip greens for the 7th week in a row. (Note, a Pollanesque meal was cooked while frivolously blogging this post)

A central point in Poe-Lan's argument is that both humanity and food tradition have coevolved to infallible levels because of their continued existence -- processed soy foods like tofu are safe while TVP is not because Asians have eaten tofu for centuries, while the lifespan of crackpot bloggers is unclear. However, Poe-Lan posits that humanity will never adapt to the Western industrial diet because its ill effects of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer are not experienced until after the childbearing years. But by that logic, which seems to overestimate the speed of evolution, traditional diets would not have evolved to promote longetivity but childbearing ability. And who has time for childbearing when the garden needs to be weeded?